Disastrous Attempts at Secrecy
by Mystic Pendulum
Summary: Dating your best friend during the months your other best friend was away on an internship brings up awkward scenarios when you realize you kind of forgot to tell her. Such was the case for Sora and Riku. They were lucky that Kairi was a perceptive girl.
1. The Revelation

Riku/Sora. Written for an anon on tumblr, the prompt being: Sora and Riku have been dating for months but ended up neglecting to tell Kairi while she was away. Hilarious antics to keep her from finding out and possibly getting mad ensue.

* * *

Summer's scorching haze. The dirt road stretched in front of Riku, winding uphill towards the gathering of dusty rooftops and withered leaves of the palm trees up ahead. The sea breeze from the ocean just beyond whipped up waves of dust, blowing into his eyes and coating his shoes and pants in a layer of grey-brown.

Dead in the middle of the summer's dry season, it was hard to remember what rain felt like, Riku thought, blinking slowly, his eyelids dragging over his cornea. He wasn't much for storms, but a storm right now sounded kind of welcoming. It'd neutralize the ridiculous dryness, probably.

Beside him, a companion in his current suffering, Sora sighed and used his forearm to wipe the sticky grime from his brow. Messy hair, limp with heat, stuck to his forehead, and Riku watched a bead of sweat roll down his temple. "Riku?" he mumbled.

"Yeah?" Riku's voice cracked a little in exhaustion, his eyes on the ground, his attention dedicated to putting one foot in front of the other.

"It's hot. You should carry me."

"Pffft. No."

"Fine. If I keel over from heatstroke later, tell my parents not to cremate me."

Riku laughed, little more than breathy snicker, as they entered the neighbourhood and turned left, finally on the home stretch towards Sora's house. "We're so close now, at least die _after_ you unlock the front door. Then I don't have to drag a deadweight like you around without looking suspicious."

Riku figured if Sora's head wasn't muddled with muggy heat as it was, he'd make a witty comment in return, since Sora only sighed in happy relief as he stepped under the shade of the porch, fishing out his keys from his pocket. He jammed them into the lock once, twice, before finally twisting them in all the way and pushing down on the door handle and stumbling inside, dust shaking off.

As per routine reserved for Awfully Hot Days, they split up without further ado. Sora trudged his way upstairs while Riku immediately made his way to the living room, pulling the fan in front of the couch and dialling the speed to maximum. He slumped down and let the wind run through his bangs, closing his eyes.

He almost dozed off for a second there, and he probably would have fallen asleep right then. That is, if it weren't for something solid and ice-cold suddenly pressing against his neck.

Riku flinched and yelped in surprise.

Behind him, Sora cackled and pulled the bottle of lemon soda away, dumping a small towel on top of Riku's head. With a surprising amount of energy for someone complaining about dying from the heat merely minutes ago, he launched himself over the back of the couch and landed on the cushions with a bounce, jostling Riku while he was dabbing his face and the back of his neck dry with the towel. He swung his legs into Riku's lap, tanned and lanky but heavy, leaning back against the armrest, the bottle in his hands releasing a _hiss_ as he twisted the cap off.

Something in Riku's pocket buzzed. Oh, he must have gotten a text. He considered ignoring it at first, in favour of basking in electrically-generated wind with Sora until they've both cooled off enough, but then again, what if Kairi sent it? She just finished her three-month long internship today, so she would be leaving Radiant Gardens soon, right?

So he pulled his phone out from his pocket, swiping the touchscreen unlocked. He squinted at the screen, angling it away from the light so it wasn't too dim for him to read the contents of the message. Not Kairi.

"Who's it from?" Sora asked, his voice echoing a little in the bottle.

"Xion," Riku answered, holding his phone in one hand and motioning to the bottle in Sora's possession with the other, prompting to Sora hand it over. He took a quick sip, the soda lightly stinging his tongue, before he read aloud, "Come party tonight for my first anniversary with Rox. Bring food."

"No wonder Roxas wasn't home. I didn't know it's been a year since he started going out with her, either. Time flies, huh?" Sora murmured as he ran his fingers through his hair. He made a face when they came out shiny and wiped them on Riku's discarded towel.

"I didn't know people partied to celebrate how long they've been dating anyways. I mean, they actually do that?" Riku turned off the phone with an electronic _click_ and let it fall down to the cushions beside him.

Sora shrugged, with a sheepish sort of grin. "You're asking the guy who can't even remember when he started going out with you."

"You don't?"

"Uh… no?" Sora reclaimed his bottle from Riku's grasp.

"Good, because I don't really remember either," Riku admitted.

Sora nearly choked around a mouthful of soda, clapping a hand over his mouth and swallowing with a grimace. "Christ, you almost made me feel bad for second there," he wheezed, kicking one of Riku's legs with the heel of his foot. "Maybe it's because we never needed to, I don't know, define a starting point, like Roxas and Xion did. It's hard to tell that way, get what I mean?"

It _was _hard to tell, Riku thought, as he watched the blades of the fan whirr, semi-transparent with their sheer speed. There wasn't a confession or anything, or whatever the TV-series-of-the-season liked to laud. Things just happened, so to speak, nice and easy and comfortable, because Sora's been his best friend from even before he could remember anyways.

"Yeah, I know. I think I like it this way," Riku replied. Besides, he was pretty damn sure he couldn't deal with a bucket of awkward dumped on his head at once, as was typical of confessions of a romantic nature.

He didn't need to turn his head to know that Sora was wearing a fond smile, because he could feel it warmly beaming onto his face already.

He slumped further down in his seat on the couch, his fingers absentmindedly tracing over the small scars on Sora's knees— a testament to years spent playing outdoors together— while they passed the bottle of soda back and forth until it was empty.

A thought slipped into Riku's mind just then. Wind still blowing into his face, he held onto that thought, entertained it, gave it substance, and then a fissure of dread opened up in him, his insides teetering on the jagged edges.

Because someone very, very important, who hadn't been around for the past few months, didn't know about this development between them. At all. Because she wasn't there to see it.

"Sora?" Riku asked, very carefully.

"Huh?"

"I don't think Kairi knows."

Sora smacked a hand to his forehead. "Oh. Oh _no_."


	2. A Slightly Drunken Reunion

Kairi very much disliked travelling by air. The airline's 'new and improved soundproofing'? That was a total lie, because she could hear the jet engine's perpetual hum anyways; it was just loud enough interfere with the music playing in her earbuds and it left her ears ringing afterwards. And the seats were too small, which was saying something, because Kairi was a fairly petite girl.

And the customs line up was horrendously long.

With how popular Destiny Islands got during vacation time, one would have thought to open a few more lanes. Unfortunately for Kairi, such a commonsense tactic was wishful thinking.

But at last, _at last. _Suitcase trailing behind her_, _she stepped past the automatic doors and into the familiar, choking heat of Destiny Islands. Amidst the horde of tired tourists in their cheap floral prints and people in businesswear with their phones pressed to the sides of their heads, Kairi looked past the asphalt, past the fronds of the palm trees to focus on distant glint of ocean, and smiled. Smiled because there was no place like home, and the muggy heat wrapped around her like a blanket.

Letting go of her suitcase for a moment, Kairi stretched her arms up in the air in an attempt to straighten out her spine, because airplane seats weren't conductive to back health in the slightest. Then she waved down a taxi.

She had gotten the text when she remembered to switch off airplane mode on her phone, when she was somewhere midway across the bridge connecting the airport and main island.

"Xion's anniversary, huh." Kairi murmured to herself. It was three in the afternoon right now. If she showed up at Xion's at nine, she could shower and even get a few hours of sleep.

She quickly texted back an _"I'm coming 3"_. She stared at her list of contacts for a moment, and briefly wondered if she should send a text telling Riku and Sora that she was back too.

Nah, she eventually decided, her finger pressing down on the power button. It'd be way more fun to surprise them while they were both drunk and unsuspecting at the party instead. She stuffed her phone back into her pocket and spent the rest of the ride gazing out the window.

Xion's mother was an architect, so it was no surprise that her family lived in a very spacious, very well-designed house, with marble tiling that kept the occupants cool during the sweltering dry season and strategically placed windows to ensure that as much natural light found its way in all days of the year. And, like many other residences on this particular island, it was close to the beach.

It was nighttime though, when the sun was busy roasting the other side of the world and giving Destiny Islands the much-needed respite from the light and heat for roughly half a day, so such ingenuity in design had gone unnoticed by a group of teenagers in varying degrees of inebriation.

Just as well, anyways. A group of drunk teenagers wouldn't give a damn about an architect pointing out to them the wonders of strategic spatial planning, and the architect wouldn't exactly be thrilled that there were a group of drunk teenagers goofing off in her house. Thankfully, she was currently away on a business trip.

In the center of the living room, Sora was sitting cross-legged at a coffee table and holding a plastic cup with just enough alcohol content to give him a buzz when half of it was drunk. He vaguely registered a stereo blasting music on the far side of the living room to his left, a rather loud game of cards to his right, and a whiff of cigarette smoke—probably from some of Roxas' older friends— drifting in from outside.

Most of his attention was fixed on Riku, though. His boyfriend was sitting directly across from him, chin resting on top of folded arms and holding a cup of his own, and his lovely face was pleasantly close to Sora's.

Hm. Boyfriend. The words 'Riku' and 'boyfriend' went very well together, Sora decided. And, he thought, he could abbreviate 'boyfriend' as 'BF', which was pretty neat because he could _also_ abbreviate 'best friend' as 'BF'. He could theoretically use just one acronym to refer to Riku, who was most definitely both at once. How cool was that? He grinned to himself at this realization.

"What're you thinking about?" Riku asked. Evidently he had noticed Sora's little epiphany, and since Riku was Riku, it was natural that he'd ask.

"You're my BF. Both ways." Sora informed him. "Isn't that cool?"

It took Riku about ten seconds to fully grasp what he was saying, his expression changing from curiously confused to an endearingly embarrassed sort of realization as he did. "Oh, ha ha. Clever." Riku mumbled.

Sora's grin grew wider. He reached out a hand to tangle in Riku's hair, fine and soft and pale, and he leaned forward, just a little—

"Aw, how _cute_."

Despite the traces of alcohol making rounds in his system, _that voice _immediately sent Sora whipping backwards, hitting his head on the couch cushion behind him (thankfully it was soft, otherwise he'd have a double hangover the next morning). "K-Kairi?! You're back?"

Kairi laughed. "The one and only. Did you drink too much and forget about me?"

"You're back?" Sora repeated dumbfoundedly. "Already?"

"You're not tired?" Riku asked, as he sat up from the floor, because he too had thrown himself backwards.

"I'm fine! I got some sleep before coming here." Kairi rested her hands on her hips and peered at the both of them, smiling as she did. Her hair had gotten longer, Sora noticed belatedly. "Be right back, I'm gonna get something to drink too." With a teasing wink, Kairi carefully stepped past the card-game circle— which was less of a card game and more of a feeble attempt at building a house of cards at this point—and made her way to the kitchen.

When the coast was clear, Sora used his foot to nudge Riku under the coffee table. "How much of that did she see? Should we tell her?" Sora hissed.

"One: No idea, but at least we weren't full-on making out. And two: _How_?" Riku muttered in return. "'Hey Kairi, we somehow started dating while you were away and it never really crossed our minds to tell you?' Talk about awkward."

Sora rested his face in his hands. "We're screwed," he groaned. "She's gonna be suspicious now."

"We can say we were drunk, if she asks."

"Better idea: let's actually get drunk. Might as well make it completely legit." Sora replied, bringing his cup to his lips and downing the rest of it.

"Works for me."


	3. Misaligned Excuses

Alas, all good things must come to an end. No matter how much Sora enjoyed being blissfully responsibility-free during the summer, life very much existed beyond dozing off on the couch with the BF (Sora still thought the acronym quite clever) and attending anniversary parties of the twin brother.

Namely, the fact that school was a little over a week away, and that fact was generally met with a plethora of groans and eye-rolls.

Roxas likened the end of summer vacation as death of the individual. Because the school curriculum stunted creativity, forcing those who went through to think alike, priming them to work as drones in the grown-up world. Or something. He'd have to ask Roxas about that, since Sora didn't exactly care for the school curriculum except for the handful of subjects he found fun.

Riku, on occasion, would glance at the tacky real estate calendar that was stuck to his fridge with a magnet, each time with subtly increasing amounts of dread.

Xion would try to get as much sleep as possible.

But Kairi, she just _had_ to be the odd one out. She actually rather _liked_ going to school, and Sora couldn't even begin to fathom why. However, it certainly explained why she chose to go through an internship instead of wisely wasting her summer on the beach.

And unfortunately for Sora, who routinely blocked all school-related thoughts from his head when school wasn't in session, Kairi had this amazing, one-of-a-kind talent of being able to drag him and Riku along to shop for school supplies no less than five days in advance of the start of a new semester.

This year though, it was just Sora. After the close call at Xion's house, he and Riku came to the agreement to spend more time with Kairi individually, just in case Kairi picked something up between them, like lingering touches or Sora leaning too close to Riku for too long, whenever they were together as a trio.

As he helped Kairi lug home a bag of empty binders and notebooks in one hand and a presentation board in the other, he silently cursed his rotten luck in rock-paper-scissors.

Or maybe Riku was just too good at reading his face.

The presentation board was slipping from his hold, so he stopped for a moment to heft it back into place under his arm. "Geez, why do you even need a board this early in the year, Kairi?"

"It's for my internship," Kairi replied, readjusting the box of books in her arms and wrinkling her nose a little. "I have discuss all this researchy stuff I did while I was away at some panel. The internship was fun and all, but sheesh, here I thought I was done."

"That sucks," Sora said, mirroring her expression. "You need any help? I don't think I can really do much, but yeah."

Kairi brightened and brought up a hand to tuck some off her hair behind her ear, the box she was holding balancing precariously on a single arm for a moment. "Really? That'd be great! I have all my notes, but we might have to a bit more research, then design the board and maybe even a slideshow."

Sora nodded. "Cool. When's it due?"

"Second day of classes."

_"Seriously?"_

"I know, right? You want to get started once we get back to my place?"

"I—um. Sorry, Kairi, but I'm going with Riku to the movies later today."

"Hm," Kairi said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "So, like a date or something?"

Sora nearly opened his mouth to say 'yes' in reply, only to clamp his mouth back shut.

Hold it right there. Did Kairi just say _date?_

A date typically meant an outing between two people. And it implied that there was some sort of _romantic_ thing going on.

Oh no. Oh no no no. That wasn't the right idea for Kairi to have. Absolutely not. Alarm bells were blaring full blast in Sora's head, kicking his brain into high gear in the single-minded goal of keeping Kairi blissfully unaware.

"No, no. I mean... uh, no! What gave you that idea?" Sora said, forcing a laugh. "Riku and I aren't going to the movies!" At Kairi's questioning stare, Sora hastily added, "Well, we _are_ going to the movies. Just not together. Yeah. We're… we're going to different showings!"

"Really," Kairi said. Was that a sarcastic undertone there, or was he just imagining things?

Well, whatever. What mattered now was coming with up a mildly reasonable explanation for Kairi as to why he and Riku were going to be at the same place at the same time tonight, just not _together_.

"Yeah! Keyblade Master IIIand The World Begins With Youare both airing this week, so Riku's gonna watch one while I watch the other." In hindsight, maybe Sora should have mentioned specifically which one he'd be watching just to make everything sound more convincing, but he pressed on. "Then we're going to talk about which one sucks more. Yup."

Except they totally were going to be _together_, in the sense that they were going to occasionally make out in the back row with _Keyblade Master III_ onscreen while the speakers behind them played epic sounds of trains blowing up and all that. But Kairi didn't need to know. It would be best that she didn't know.

He plastered one of his winning grins onto his face and made a show of pulling his phone out of his pocket. "And would you look at the time! I almost forgot that I promised to help my mom fix the shed today, so I gotta get going. Seeya!"

Total lie, that was, but he gently shoved the supplies he was carrying into Kairi's arms and scurried away all the same.

* * *

"Hey, Riku," Kairi began conversationally, stretching her legs out alongside the length of the boat Riku was rowing and inspecting her flip-flops.

"Hm?"

"How was Keyblade Master III?"

Riku offered her a shrug, the best he could with both his hands occupied with oars. "Not bad, I guess. I'm pretty sure Quadrilateral's writers are just making stuff up as they go along at this point, but at least the CGI is nice."

"What did Sora say about The World Begins With You?"

"The World… Begins With You? We're watching that next week," he responded, puzzled.

"_Oh. _So you watched Keyblade Master together, then?"

"Mhm," Riku hummed in confirmation. "I mean, what else were we going to do?"

Kairi shrugged, a little smile on her lips. "Just wondering. Say, did you guys do anything… _fun?_"

_Fun. _Said with the kind of slight lilt in the voice that Riku's generally overanalytical brain wasn't sure if it liked. Like it implied that he and Sora did… _things_ together.

_Oh god_, was she catching on? Shake her off the path, Riku, and quick.

He settled for the innocent route. "Well, isn't usually watching a movie is usually something fun to do?" Riku said, trying to smirk and keep his voice even, despite the suspicious tingling on his cheeks. Dammit.

How awkward. And Riku really didn't deal with awkward.

"Well, aren't you a smartass," quipped Kairi. The boat reached the jetty, and thankful for the excuse to pretend not to hear her, Riku immediately hopped off and began tying the boat.

"Are you free all Saturday?" Kairi asked, once both her feet landed onto the dock with a thump. Riku swallowed.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "Why?"

"We're going to finish up my project over at Sora's."

Oh. Riku thought for a bit. Even though he and Sora agreed to spend as little time together with Kairi just in case they gave themselves away, it wasn't like that'd happen if they were busy working, right?

"Sure," he said. He raised a hand to bid her goodbye, before somewhat hastily sliding his hands into his pockets and walking away.

Yeah, great job as always, Riku. That wasn't subtle at all.


End file.
